Betrayal of the Dove - By Capri Montgomery Page 0,56

of his word and once he committed to something he didn’t back down. He went after it, pursued it, fought for it, hard and relentless without mercy until he met the end goal. The mission that brought them together had been one of Shane’s last missions. He was there to uncover a domestic terrorism ring. That was the job of his team, to keep America safe from enemies in and out of its borders. They had needed local authorities assistance and they got Leo’s precinct, which was good because they had came upon a bomb that was so large it could have leveled a few city blocks. Leo, confident or cocky, depending on how anybody looked at it, walked right into hell without a second thought. Shane’s team went in to disarm the bomb of the human persuasion while Leo went in to get what the bastards had set up.

The group of religious fanatics had left a few of their own behind. Just in case somebody came in and tried to stop things they were there to shoot to kill. Shane couldn’t understand what would make anybody willing to blow themselves up for any cause, but there they were, eight total, just waiting for everything to explode in some big blaze of glory.

“I’ll look after your woman,” Leo said and Shane was sure that was his way of telling him he understood she was off limits. “You go find the bastard.”

“What if it’s not him? Seriously, Shane, why would he come after me?”

“To get to me,” he uttered those words with staunch anger in his tone.

“I have had my own problems lately,” she reminded him. “There was the lawsuit. And Dumas did say it wasn’t over. Then there’s Craig. I don’t think he’d do this, but who walks around carrying flex cuffs?”

“They’re not hard to get,” he told her. Anybody could walk around with those things. He had seen it before. A lot of predators kept their victims immobilized that way.

“The point is,” she sighed. “This could be anything. And maybe your friend’s death was something else.”

“No it wasn’t,” Shane stroked the back of his fingers along the bruise on her cheek. “I got a call last night that the reopened investigation on David’s car accident showed that it wasn’t an accident. Then you take that with Rick’s murder in that hotel parking lot and it’s clear; somebody is after our team. That somebody is working their way west and it makes sense that I’d be the next target from the direction he’s traveling.”

She wrapped her arms around him and held him tight. “Why would anybody do this to you all? You’re the good guys.”

“We are, but we also pissed off a lot of the bad guys in the process. It comes with the job,” he noted. While they were mostly covert with their identities, there wasn’t complete anonymity. Somebody knew who they all were and whoever it was they were picking them off one by one. So far, both men killed had been assigned to the first Dove Team with Rick being the last one to come on board for their unit. He didn’t know if this were an attack on all the teams, starting with theirs, or if this had something specifically to do with his unit. Without knowing that information, he couldn’t fully know if he were looking in the right direction. It could be something in relation to their previous missions, or it could be somebody with a beef on the government sponsored teams in general. He couldn’t be sure, but he was leaning towards it being somebody pissed at his unit since both men had been a part of his unit.

“I’m supposed to be helping you stay safe,” he said softly. “And here I am putting you in danger.”

“You’ve helped me,” she said as she pulled back and looked in his eyes. “Now you have to help yourself and what’s left of the team you worked with. Go; do whatever you need to do. I’ll be safe here.”

“Freeze!” Alyssa jumped as they all turned around.

“Craig? What are you doing?” She asked breathlessly as she tried to get her wildly pulsing heartbeat back under control.

He lowered his gun. “I saw your back door open.”

“What were you doing back there?” Leo didn’t hold his tongue; that was one thing Shane liked about the man from the day he met him. He spoke what was on his mind without much censorship involved.

“My job,” Craig snapped. “Who are you?”

“Not